When President Barack Obama visited Myanmar in 2012, the first time a sitting United States president had been to the country, he had hope and change on his mind again.

After roughly half a century of dictatorial rule, Myanmar, also known as Burma, seemed ready for a sudden democratic transformation. The government began to lessen media censorship, release political prisoners and soften security force crackdowns, and it said the nation would hold general elections in 2015. Two years later, Obama is making his second trip there as part of an eight-day tour through Asia, and Myanmar is far from a shining example of democracy.

Rather, the country seems on the cusp of either committing to democracy or settling back into military rule.

“Myanmar presented one very clear example of a significant change in U.S. policy that could be said to have had a very beneficial impact on a key nation in Asia. Obama does not want that victory to slip away," Jonah Blank, a former south and southeast Asia policy director on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Mashable. “The reform really looked as if it was going in a clear direction. Now the picture is a little more muddied."

President Barack Obama shakes hands with Myanmar President Thein Sein at the end of their meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on May 20, 2013.

Image: Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

The two biggest deterrents to democracy most cited by media reports, human rights experts, and others are the nation's electoral system and its treatment of Myanmar's minority Rohingya Muslims.

Myanmar was ruled by a military junta with a brutal human rights record from 1962 to 2011 and, despite relaxed military control over the past three years, the government has shown signs that the armed forces will remain Myanmar's most powerful governing body for the foreseeable future.

The most obvious example of military dominance is the continued suppression of Nobel Peace Prize winner Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition party, the National League for Democracy.

Myanmar armed police officers lead census enumerators to a Muslim refugee camps north of Sittwe, Rakhine State, western Myanmar, on April 2.

Image: Khin Maung Win/Associated Press

Aung San Suu Kyi, a former political prisoner who spent more than 10 years under house arrest, has for decades been touted as a hugely popular leader who could lead Myanmar's first truly democratic government, but the military wrote a law into the constitution that prevents her from running for president. The law states that anyone with family members from a different country cannot hold the nation's highest office, and Aung San Suu Kyi has two sons with her British former husband. The legislation, experts say, was designed with her in mind.

U.S. President Barack Obama stands with Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as he addresses members of the media at Suu Kyi's residence in Yangon, Myanmar, on Nov. 19, 2012.

Image: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press

Myanmar's current government, led by president U Thein Sein, is civilian in name but full of former military members. The president himself used to be a general. Blank, who is now a political scientist at a think tank called RAND Corporation, sees Thein Sein not as an advocate for true reform, but as "the figure trying to preserve the system by changing it. He...would change it just enough to keep it alive."

Myanmar President Thein Sein visits a photo exhibition at Diaoyutai state guesthouse in Beijing on June 29.

Image: Wang Zhao/Associated Press

Real democracy is also impeded by much of Myanmar's discrimination against ethnic minorities, particularly the Rohingya Muslims, and experts say that neither the military government nor Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy has spoken out in defense of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims, who have long been persecuted by Buddhists in the primarily Buddhist nation.

This map shows the area of Myanmar where most of the nation's violence against Muslims has taken place.

The government has devised a plan to limit the rights of the Rohingya Muslims, preventing them from wielding any political power, and it has done little to prosecute Buddhists who have attacked Muslim communities in a way that Human Rights Watch says amounted to ethnic cleansing.

In this June 24 photo, 7-year-old Mubari Khuson, center, and other children stand in Dar Paing, a camp for Rohingya Muslims in north of Sittwe, Rakhine state, Myanmar.

Image: Gemunu Amarasinghe/Associated Press

Aung San Suu Kyi's party has also not voiced support for the nation's Muslim minority, a move that experts consider a callous political calculation ahead of the 2015 elections, as there is likely little political value in sticking their necks out for Myanmar's Muslims.

All this portrays Myanmar as far from the major democratic victory that the Obama administration touted it as two years ago. But that's not so much Myanmar's fault as it is the fault of the White House, Gregory Poling, a southeast Asia fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank, told Mashable.

U.S. President Barack Obama waves as he boards Air Force One at Beijing Capital International Airport, on the way to Myanmar, on Nov. 12.

Image: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press

Myanmar's government has instituted real reforms since Thein Sein became president in 2011, but Poling said that the disparity between what has happened and the expectations created by the Obama administration have made it easier to highlight the disturbing aspects of Myanmar as the country has slowly turned toward democracy.

“There needs to be some dose of realism introduced," Poling said of Obama's trip to Myanmar. "These things do take time. It’s still only really been three years since the civilian takeover of the government.”

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